


hide and seek

by magesamell



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode AU: s03e08-09 Human Nature/Family of Blood, Episode: s03e08-09 Human Nature/Family of Blood, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Post-Episode AU: s02e13 Doomsday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 17:52:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17390930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magesamell/pseuds/magesamell
Summary: “Why Doctor,” Rose murmured, her voice colored with the ghost of a laugh. “Are you missing your wife?”Human Nature AU





	hide and seek

_Hullo Rose! Remember, this is a list of instructions for when I’m human. I’ve explained most of it already, but a little cheat sheet never hurt anyone, eh?_

_First and foremost: don’t worry. The Chameleon Arch will work with my subconscious to build a disguise to keep us safe — one for me and one for you. Just like going undercover. Forgot to ask: you’re a good actor, aren’t you?_

 

-o-

 

John Smith came back with drinks, and Rose tried her very best to smile.

“Thanks,” she said, and made a vow to herself. Tonight — she would make a proper effort. Just another month. She could keep it up for another month.

Like the shop, Rose kept reminding herself. It was just like cashiering at Henrik’s. Except she was on call all the time and she had to play babysitter to a disguised alien nona-centennial. That’s just what her nine to five was like, now.

He shifted, settling close at her elbow. The tweed of his coat scratched her bare shoulder. The silver band on his left hand caught the light as he took a sip of his punch. Correction: she had to play babysitter to a stranger who thought they were much, much more familiar they she had any interest in being. Worse, he looked...how he looked.

“How were the boys today?” Rose asked, louder, perhaps, than necessary for him to hear her over the ambient din of the party. Not nearly loud enough to make her stop remembering.

“Oh, you know,” he said, tilting his chin — and Rose determinedly ignored the swell of memories blooming with that very gesture — “Rowdy. Some of them, I swear—“ he bit off a sigh, took another swig. “A good deal of those fathers are simply wasting their money, I think. No direction, Mr. Doherty in particular—“

Rose tipped her head into her cup, trying not to scoff. It wasn’t his fault he reminded her of every stupid head teacher who ever scolded her. Rose Tyler can’t sit still. Rose Tyler distracts others in class. Rose Tyler has no direction.

“D’you want to dance?” The flash of annoyance in his eyes at her interruption quieted quickly to something surprised, something softer.

“Of course,” he said, and took her hand. He lead her towards the other couples, rounded her to the edge of crowd, took her other hand. Slowly they began to step together, began to sway.

 _Some distraction_ , she thought to herself, her stomach churning over someone long gone.  What she wouldn’t give to be thirty odd years in the future in a concrete box chased by an automated ghost boy in a gas mask.

Rose leaned forward, rested her chin on his shoulder. It was easier, some times, if she couldn’t see his face. Even easier if she closed her eyes and relied only on his smell. Sometimes, for a moment, she could very nearly convince herself she wasn’t adrift and alone in nineteen hundred and thirteen. But Rose was clever and he was clumsy and no amount of her own wishing could help him fool her for more than a breath, more than the turn of his shoulders.

Still, the soft swaying, the soft music, his soft hands — it wasn’t her Doctor, but it wasn’t...actively offensive. But then, of course, the man spoke.

“I’m...sorry,” he said, which astounded her, because Josh Smith had never apologized to his wife before. Not in the two months they’d been at Farrington’s. Rose opened her mouth, but he shot her a look. “No, could you keep q— can I say this, please?”

Rose nodded.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I know you’re unhappy, here. It’s not — not exactly how I’d imagine it going, either. You’ve given so much to be here with me, so I could do this. I haven’t forgotten that.”

Rose frowned. Sometimes, he said things like this. Some backstory the Doctor has neglected to clue her in on. It hadn’t been much trouble in the past, playing along. She just had to agree with him. Agreeing with him, usually, shut him up.

“But I—“ he stumbled over his words. “I’m not. It doesn’t matter to me, the position, teaching I mean.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she whispered.

“I thought I told you to be quiet,” he said, but it wasn’t cutting, the way he sometimes was. He sounded like he could laugh.

“I’m very bad at that,” she said.

“I know,” he said, and squeezed her hand. Rose was beginning to be very confused.

“I’ve been talking to the headmaster,” he continued. “He said there’s another position in Sheffield he thought might be a good fit. I’m afraid I’m still obliged to Farrington’s for the next semester, but—“

“We can’t leave!” Rose blurted, a little more panicked than she intended. She knew, of course, that they could. As long as she took the fob watch, they could theoretically go anywhere. But — she just _couldn’t_ leave the TARDIS. Her visits to the timeship were the only thing keeping her sane, she wouldn’t know what to do without them, and besides—

“Yes, we can,” he said softly. And then he turned his head, spoke into her ear. “I just — I can’t be happy when you’re not. I want you to be happy. I want — what we had before.” And carefully, quietly, he pressed his lips to her temple.

Rose stilled. He was. He was. Oh, it was so easy to hate him. He was different. So different. Bad different. Condescending and cowardly and conforming completely to the time. He was casually misogynistic and utterly uncompassionate to all he considered below him and she knew why the Doctor had known it was Cassandra so immediately, because there was just no fooling her. Rose hated him. She hated him for being smaller, for being different, for stealing the face of the man she loved.

The problem was that the Chameleon Arch was good at lying, at picking the kernels of truth and stretching them to be believable. And so John Smith had introduced her as his wife because _of course_ , and John Smith remembered through a fog of clouded glass of the two of them being happy, once. Because he loved her, even here, even now, and now more than ever she missed him, her Doctor.

It was him that was talking through the distortion, the lies, the disguise.

“I’m sorry,” she found herself apologizing, “I know I’ve been difficult.” Rose tried for deflection. A joke. “You know, at this point I don’t think divorce would be much of a scandal. I think everyone wonders how you put up with me.”

“Lower your voice!” He hissed at her, and after a moment. “Please don’t say that. I — we’ll try again. It’ll be different in Sheffield. Don’t say that. Don’t say that, please.”

Rose raised her head, squeezed his shoulder. “Don’t be silly. You know I’d never leave you. You’re stuck with me. I’m just that annoying.”

His eyes were dark, alien. She had trouble reading his expressions, sometimes. A completely new psychology did that to a person, Rose guessed. And she was thinking about this, about how this body had faces she’d never seen before, when he surprised her with his lips on hers.

Oh. _Oh._ They hadn’t really done this — much at all. She had stopped any, uh, intimacy vehemently early on, and after that he had been annoyed enough with her with they didn’t touch at all. Small kisses, here and there, but like habit, like appearance, never like this — never after he’d apologized and had told her he loved her, in the way he always told her he loved her — without saying it.

It was that disturbing thought that let it happen. And so without her quite intending them to, her lips parted, and he tasted her briefly before he pulled away. And now she could see — his eyes were warm, and she had to laugh at him, had to pull him closer.

“You’re lucky I like you so much,” she told his shoulder. Oh _god_ , she missed him. She missed him so much she didn’t mind his small, bewildered laugh. And because she was a professional, she stepped away from him quick enough he wouldn’t catch her misty eyes. “I need the loo. Be back in a tic, yeah?”

 

-o-

 

_The Family are the ultimate predators. Once they mark someone for the hunt, they’ll pursue them with everything they’ve got. And this family have got a lot — three able bodied hunters and a hungry child to boot. But predators need a lot of energy to keep up the chase. Most Earth predators compensate with long rest periods — s’why cats and lions and the like snooze the day away._

_The Family are different. They don’t sleep. They burn through bodies like matches, chasing and chasing and using their catches to chase new vessels. It’s a life cycle dependent on theft and bloodshed. They would use my body to fuel the hunt for decades._

_But if we hide, Rose, we let them fizzle out._

 

-o-

 

She very nearly killed Joan Redfern.

“You’ve read the journal. You know I’m not lying. Now where is the watch?”

The matron huffed, her mouth opening and closing in astonishment, in hesitation, in a poor attempt at stalling. Rose was losing her ability to care about reasons, about justifications. She gripped the alien blaster she still held in hand.

“I’ve no idea, I really haven’t,” Joan said. “Please, Mrs. Smith, sit down—”

“You’re the _only_ one who’s been in the room besides me and him. Now tell me,” Rose raised the blaster level, “where the watch is.”

Outside, guns popped and thudded into wet grass and dry straw. Even now, his voice carried up the stairs as he shouted orders. To soldiers. To children. It had to end. She would end it, here and now.

“Mrs. Smith, I understand — you’re concerned for your husband, but I swear to you, nothing untoward —”

“He is _not_ my husband!” Rose shrieked, shaking and _furious_. “He is an impostor, he is an idiot who will _never_ be half the man the Doctor was.” She blinked. “Is.” Rose forced herself to breathe, and with a slump of the shoulders, pressed the hilt of the gun to her forehead.

“I’m sorry, Joan. I really am. But your friend doesn’t exist. He can’t exist.” Rose looked over, and Joan was staring at her with the same reserved fear she’d had since Baines had crashed the dance with two human shells in tow. Her lip was quivering. And on a different day, in a different world, Rose would’ve jumped to console her. But now — all she did was lower her voice and impart the urgency of the situation as best she could. “The Doctor told me to let him out if the Family came, and they’re _here._ They’re killing those kids outside.” Rose stepped forward. “Remember _your_ husband, Joan. It needs to stop. You want it to end just as much as I do.” Slowly, she let the blaster slip from her fingers, let it clatter onto the hardwood floor.

“Tell me where the watch is.”

Joan swallowed, and in a fluid, fast motion that swished her skirts, turned to check the mantle again. “It was here when he showed me the book. It’s not here now. That’s all I know.” She looked back over her shoulder, and Rose knew that helpless, hopeless anxiety. “I’m sorry.”

“Shit,” Rose said, and Joan gasped, but Rose was already moving, already pacing. “ _Shit_. I’m stuck. I’m actually stuck. He left me alone _again._ ”

The low and high chugging of gunfire. Rose rubbed at her forehead. She felt Joan watching her.

“You...you are with him? This...Doctor?”

“We travel together, like in the journal,” Rose said, and kept rubbing. Think. _Think_. His stupid list of instructions didn’t talk about what she should do if they lost the watch. God, why hadn’t she kept it with her? On her person? Because she had been afraid of losing it when she walked through the woods to the TARDIS, obviously. Useless!

Joan was persistent. Inquisitive. “But — he said you were his wife.”

“The Chameleon Arch worked with the Doctor’s subconscious to build the disguise,” Rose recited, still pacing. Okay, if he couldn’t change back, she had to protect him until the Family fizzled out.

“Are you the Doctor’s wife?”

Rose shook her head quickly, irritated. “No. This,” she motioned to the room around them — the school books and trunks and unfolded newspapers. “—is nothing. It’s made up. The book is what’s real.” She couldn’t believe Joan was wasting so much time sorting out her marital status. They had to make a plan. Find someplace to hide him.

“All those…creatures,” Joan murmured. “All that fighting.”

“I can’t give up. We have to hide.” Rose stopped, mid-stride. “That’s what I’m gonna have to do. Keep running and hiding for a whole nother month. While people keep dying.” She went very still. Glanced at Joan. “Can I do that?”

The nurse kept her gaze only for a moment before she dipped her head down with a quiet elegance which Rose hadn’t mastered in three months. “I know where we could go,” Joan said, and Rose very nearly kissed her.

 

-o-

 

_The Family is dangerous, Rose, I won’t lie to you. But I’m pretty good myself — scratch that — I’m very good. More likely than not, nothing exciting will happen at all. But for the sake of being thorough, we’ll consider the possibility. Maybe they find us. It could be next week. It could be on the eve of their lifespan. It could be tomorrow._

_You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, Lewis. I trust you’ll use it._

 

-o-

 

“So it was a lie.”

John Smith held the fob watch up to his face, and Rose tried her very best to stand still.  He turned it over in his hands, trailed his finger-tips against the grooves of the circular type. She stood across the cottage kitchen, hands tucked behind her back, as far as she could get.

“We were nothing,” he said, grim. “All of it was a farce.”

Rose swallowed. “Open it.”

The man chuckled. “So you agree.”

Rose twitched, twisted her fingers in her tight gasp. “You’re not him. You’ve replaced him. I need you to undo it.” Be calm, she reminded herself. She couldn’t lose it like she did with Joan. Not when she was this close.

“Everything we did — everything I tried. It was nothing. I’m — I’m nothing.” Rose watched him thumb the latch. And against her deepest wishes, something inevitable bubbled within her, moved her lips. She took a step towards him.

“You’re not...nothing. You’re—”

His tone was pure condescension. “I’m an invention. A fantasy. I remember some things, Rose.”

 _What things_ , sounded loud and inescapable in her head. “That doesn’t mean you’re not your own person,” she said, helpless. “S’not fair. I know it’s not.”

He looked at her, and saw her panic mirrored on him, felt its volume and fervor. “We could run. We could leave.” His eyes were wide and white and dark. “Go somewhere else. Try — try again. We could just let them have it, and leave.”

“ _No!_ ” She scrambled up to his side, snatched the watch from him. “You can’t!” Rose breathed heavily, and watching his face, followed his gaze to where she clutched the thing to her chest, nested between her collarbones.

“You’re really—” she panted, and clipped her jaw shut. Spoke viciously. “I knew you were different, but you’re really just a stupid human. All you care about is yourself! You don’t care about anyone else!”

She watched anger flash in him, fast and electric. A old and tired sight she was sick of. “I don’t care?” He sputtered, voice rising. “If we give them the watch everything stops. You want me to die and let the Family kill everyone else, too.”

“He’ll stop it!”

“You just want him back!”

“ _Yes_! And I don’t care what you think!” It was too loud. All of it was too cold and sharp and exposed. He was looking at her with something she didn’t want to see, so she closed her against it. “You’re nothing compared to him!” Rose pressed the fob watch more firmly against her chest, felt its warmth against her skin and the unmerciful prick of tears at the corners of her eyes. “I shouldn’t have told you anything. I should have just opened it myself.”

“That would’ve been kinder,” he muttered. “Oh, god. We’re never going to Sheffield.”

Her eyes flew open. “Is that really what you’re worried about right now?!” Surrounded by the deadliest hunter-aliens in the galaxy and an army of scarecrow zombies, and he was being sentimental.

“Well, I’m sorry! That’s who I am.” He ran a hand through his hair, and her heart under the fob watch twinged. “I thought — I thought all I had to worry about was my ridiculous wife.”  He looked at her, panic resolving to despair. “But you’re not...you’re not even my wife.”

Rose bit her lip. Shook her head. “Me and the Doctor...we’re not…we don’t do that.”

The man laughed. “You don’t let him kiss you either, do you?

Rose sputtered, suddenly feeling too hot for the room. “Let him?”

But he was still laughing. Laughing though it wasn’t funny.

“Poor sod,” he was saying. “Okay.” He looked up at her again, guilt lashed and bracing across his countenance. “I — I was a terrible husband.”

Rose smiled. Pointed at herself. “Rubbish wife.” The cottage door shuddered. Rose exhaled shakily. “Listen, I’m sorry I lied. And I shouted. But I’m asking you.” Carefully, she untucked the watch from her collar. Offered it to him. “Please. Please change back.”

He nodded, swallowed. “Right. Okay. Terrible husband, but I can do this.” He plucked the thing from her hand, thumbing the latch. Rose held her breath. And John Smith turned his head to her. “Be happy, Rose. Please.”

She felt her jaw quiver, mouth forming words she couldn’t think of. But he was already awash in the gilded light.

 

-o-

 

_It’s gonna be alright, Rose. Better than alright. It will be a vacation! Just a little kip. You always said you liked dressing up in those fancy skirts. And don’t forget you’ll have everything in the TARDIS. Now’s your chance to catch up with all the telly you’ve missed! Mind you, if you watch the Twin Peaks revival without me...I won’t be mad, just disappointed. Let me have something to look forward to, alright?_

 

-o-

 

The TARDIS door had only just closed behind them before she was on him. Rose threw her arms around his neck, clutched him to her with a desperation she didn’t bother to hide. He reciprocated instantly, gripping her just as tight as she did him.

“Oh,” she breathed. “I missed you. I missed you so much.” And then, without lifting her nose from his collarbone, she smacked his arm. “You have the _worst ideas_. Never ask me to do that again.”

She felt his chuckle through the shiver of his cheek, the movement in his throat. “That bad, huh?”

“You couldn’t have picked maid, or fellow teacher, or I don’t know, sister or cousin…”

“Unrealistic,” he breathed, his fingers coasting up her back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize...how upsetting it would be.”

“What?” Rose drew back, but the Doctor tugged at her elbows, kept her in his arms. “You basically abandoned me to babysit a strange man for three months. A strange man who kept _coming on to me_.” She twisted an arm free from his embrace, poked him punitively in the side. He shied away from her, tried to poke her back.

“Well. You know humans. I thought you might enjoy it.”

“ _Enjoy it_?” Rose gasped. “Doctor, you made a rubbish human.”

“No good, then?”

“Absolutely not,” Rose agreed. “He was wrong about pretty much everything.” And because she was still mad at him, she turned her head and pressed her lips against the corner of his mouth.

The Doctor moved, too, and then his lips were fully on hers, and he kept moving, kept kissing her. Her hands moved from his shoulders to his face, and she kissed him as hard as she could.

“I really missed you,” she said against his lips. “He was so annoying.” The Doctor pressed his forehead against hers. Rose felt his breath on her face. “Absolutely horrible. I wanted to smack him most of the time. I almost started sleeping in the TARDIS, but I figured I couldn’t sneak back in time, and then everyone would probably think I was cheating’ on him or something, and it was just a nightmare. A nightmare that lasted _months_ ,” she reminded him, and poked him again.

“Blimey, you do know to flatter a bloke. Should I switch soaps?”

“Oh, come off it. He wasn’t you.” She kissed him again to prove her point. When she pulled back, she could see a smile pricking at his lips.

“Rose Tyler,” he said, and her face must be burning, her face must be splitting from the relief of it all. “I think I missed you,” he said, and she broke and laughed and flipped and turned and turned and turned.

 

-o-

 

_Tell me how it goes, alright? Me, human. Could be a laugh._

[Here the Doctor’s gaze jumps away, landing on something just over and beyond the camera. There’s a ghost of something more than amusement on the tug of his smirk, and a queer look in his eyes for which no number of fuzzy rewinds will unearth meaning. It might be her, who he’s looking at. Stepping anxiously, tugging luggage down the hall from the wardrobe. It might be the Chameleon Arch, hanging dull and dim from coral boughs. It might be the plating that broke loose from the TARDIS wall during the chase through the vortex. The mystery of that look haunts and sustains her for days and weeks.

But the Doctor always moves on. Looks forward. Gives her a real smile, warm and crinkle-eyed and showing teeth.]

_See you soon._

 

-o-

 

Later, she stepped out of her en suite to find the Doctor in her bed.

“Why Mr. Smith,” she said. “Why are you still here? Your wife will be missing you.”

He chuckled at that, but didn’t budge an inch as she readied herself for the evening. She settled, snuggling into the pillows, knowing that whatever the Doctor wanted to talk about, she would just have to wait for it to come. Probably, a resigned part of her reasoned, he’ll tell you to knock it off with the kissing. Proving a point against her dead husband, her husband who didn’t exist, her husband who was an subconscious invention — well, it didn’t merit any extraneous proving.

Whatever. Let him bring it up. She would laugh to see it.

“Rose,” he began, in the voice he always used for important lectures, and she pressed her face further into her pillow.

“Yeah?”

His response came quicker than she anticipated. “Thank you. For looking after me.”

Looking after. She wanted to laugh. Rose knew what he meant, but god, if he was remembering what she remembered. She seriously had to reason with him not to have sex with her, for one. Then there was the time she cussed him out for insulting the maid staff. And who could forget the very first time he introduced her as his wife and she straight up, fully, _laughed_. Rubbish disguise. His fault, anyway.

“Any time,” she said. “Just, let’s try to make it not like that again, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he agreed, and was silent.

Honestly, she felt blind. Not knowing exactly how he was processing this. A large, scared part of her didn’t want to know, or even guess, and so she tried her very best to ignore him in her pyjama puddle.

It didn’t work.

“Is that it?” she found herself asking, and she hated the anxious aftertaste of the question.

“Well,” the Doctor began, and spoke in even measures. “I thought...what happened...might merit some discussion.”

“You thought?” Rose repeated, and laughed into her duvet.

He was not amused. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Rose sighed, sat up. Punched her pillow into the right place so she could lean comfortably against the headboard. Ignored the Doctor’s eyes on her. “What part,” she said, slow and careful, “would you like to talk about?”

She watched him close and open his mouth for several seconds. And then for even longer after that, and eventually his mouth stopped working entirely as silence drew long lines.

It wasn’t fair. None of this had been fair to her, not for three months. And maybe she should be angrier at him, maybe she should be furious. But that righteousness was buried hopelessly by the sheer relief of him being safe and alive and with her, sitting stiff and silent on her bedspread and absolutely bungling the mission debrief.

It was weird, actually. She hadn’t exactly looked at him properly since he came back. But when she looked now she noticed a few things. He had changed back into his pinstripes, for one, which made her eyes twinge hotly again, but she wasn’t in the mood for crying. She couldn’t quite place his tie in the dim room, but its swirling lines caught the low light and glowed like satin. His hair was wet, styled, and she knew the slip of skin at his nape would be damp. She could touch it and confirm, if she wanted. He would let her.

Rose knew what he wanted to talk about.

“Doctor,” she said. “Why _did_ you pick wife?”

His mouth moved automatically. “The Chameleon Arch worked with my subconscious to build a disguise.”

She smirked, thought of Joan and her innocent curiosity. “Yeah, I know that bit. But why did you pick wife?”

It was comforting, how he reacted the way she knew he would. His stubborn stillness. The minute motions of his hesitation.

“Well, the Arch also works with the TARDIS,” the Doctor explained, talking quickly through a clenched jaw reserve. “They evaluated the pair of us and picked the closest human approximation given the time and context of the cover.”

Rose nodded. “Because you needed for me to have a good reason for always hanging round and keeping tabs.”

That was her olive branch. He could take it or leave it. Preferably, take it and get the hell out of her room so she could compartmentalize the last three months.

“You kissed me,” he said, a non sequitur, because he was mad and obviously set on burning the branch alive.

She peered at him like he was stupid, but the Doctor blundered on.

“Not — I don’t mean.” For the first time, he turned his body to face hers, tugged himself frightfully close. “Out there. In the TARDIS, earlier. Why did you do that?”

Rose stared. “You really don’t know?”

He stared back. His mouth worked, words forming and dissolving and she waited for something to spill out. But then he was glancing away, rambling away in steeped nerves.

“I probably leaned into it. The wife thing. I figured, with Mr. Mickey gone you hadn’t had the genuine domestic experience in a while. You were gonna be stuck with me one way or another, might as well do it properly for once. Wouldn’t want you missing out.”

“Properly?” she wondered. _Missing out_ , her mind echoed. “Doctor.”

He wouldn’t look at her.

Suddenly, she _was_ angry.

“Is that really what you think?”

He wouldn’t answer her.

Rose shook in the humming silence.  “Doctor, I was _miserable_. You saw it.” She shivered, and their knees knocked together. “Do you really think I’m that shallow? That just because some guy with your face came onto me, I’d leave you and want him instead?” She tucked her hands in her armpits. “That’s not even it, is it? Because you think I _should_ want that. You think I’m stuck with you.”

“Aren’t you?”

Rose looked up, but he was still staring resolutely down at the bedspread, or maybe at the spot her knee touched his. He was only ever this quiet when he was telling the truth.

“No,” she said. “I’ve never wanted that life. Specially not with a stranger with your face.” She wanted to touch him, but that felt too kind, too easy. “All the time I was with him, I was missing you. I was missing our life together. That’s what I was missing out on.”

It wasn’t fair. She didn’t know how else to say. Surely, surely he got the hint by now. Someday, maybe, he’d get it through his thick skull. For now, it hurt. For now, it stung.

“You really think he was a stranger?” His tone was so particular, so neutral. Rose didn’t bother looking up.

“He was. He wasn’t anything like you.”

The Doctor moved in her peripheral vision — maybe shook his head, or shifted closer.

“It doesn’t work like that. The Chameleon Arch isn’t creative, not really. It’s misdirection. It compiles data points, mixes them around and produces something different enough to fool anyone not looking carefully enough. He’s up there.” And when he raised his hand, she found her gaze following the motion. The Doctor tapped his right temple, the picture of the nonchalance. “Everything John Smith was, I’m capable of that, too.”

They had been hiding in 1913, but they weren’t. They were strangers, but they weren’t. John Smith remembered marrying Rose Tyler, but he hadn’t. And the man in front of her was saying something, asking her something, but he wasn’t.

And as she looked at the Doctor, something about the situation, the sheer convoluted ridiculousness that haunted them everywhere they went, the boring, chafing lightning strike of the last three months, all of it together made her snap into confounded clarity.

“Why Doctor,” Rose murmured, her voice colored with the ghost of a laugh. “Are you missing your wife?”

His eyes lit up, alert and watchful. She started to giggle.

“S’not really fair, is it? Cause you got more action than he ever did.” Rose leaned heavily on his arm, watched him fail to suppress a smile. “Yeah,” she drawled. “That’s what this is about, huh.”

“Poor, poor man,” Rose lamented, and her hand breached the space between them, touched his lapel. “You stole his face, his body, his life, _and_ his girl. Nearly all of her kisses, too. Serious game there, mate.” She turned her smile up to his face, peered up at him through her lashes.

“Rose.” He was trying his best not to smile, but he had shown his hand, was already touching her shoulder, was already almost tugging her closer.  “I was trying to have a serious conversation about the definitional future of our relationship. Whether or not we would cross the platonic/romantic boundary, or well, if we had already crossed it.”

“ _Already crossed it_ ,” she mocked in a dumb voice that sounded nothing like him. “You just wanted to know if I’m gonna snog you again.”

“Isn’t that what I said?” he said, and with a final tug he captured her in a proper hug. The unrelenting familiarity of his arms around her made her grin against his collar.

“Yes, by the way.”

“Oh.” His voice was warm and pleased, and Rose wouldn’t cry at something so precious, so ordinary. “Well. All right.”

They stayed just like that for many minutes. Rose was the first to lift her head. “If you’re finished adding insult to injury to the memory of John Smith, I’d like to go to bed.” She tried to pull away. “I haven’t slept in twenty hours.”

“Twenty-two,” he corrected, and let her go, though his fingers trailed her retreating elbows. Rose turned to adjust her pillow.

“Great, thanks. You staying?”

“You don’t mind?” His tone was perfectly mild.

“Of course not, Doctor dear,” Rose answered, and settled back down, pulling the duvet over her.

“Don’t do that,” he said as he slouched down to lie beside her.

“Sweetie?”

“Really, don’t.”

“Darling? Darling apple pie?”

“We are never leaving the TARDIS again.”

“Ooh,” she sang, and he groaned.

“I’ve created a monster.”

“Well, you did supply me with three months’ worth of blackmail material.”

That made the Doctor smile. She could feel it radiate across the scant inches between them, feel it warm her face.

Then he asked: “Can I?”

Her teasing facade fell like a dead weight. “Yeah.”

The Doctor pressed his lips to hers, chaste and quiet. But then he moved, his lips slanting, and she opened her mouth, let him taste her. His fingers traced her shoulder, her arm.

“Love you _,”_ she whispered, because he needed to hear it.

He was so still and silent after she said it. His lips still hovered above hers, his hand still cupped her elbow. Rose knew that he probably wouldn’t be able to say it back for a long time. Knew he was still afraid. Still superstitious, still thought if he didn’t speak the words the inevitable wouldn’t hurt. But Rose hadn’t said it to hear him say it back. As long as she knew where she stood, she and the Doctor would be fine. And he had never faltered in letting her know what she was to him: _she’s my plus one_ and _I only take the best_ and _our first date_ and _no, not to you_ and _I probably leaned into it, the wife thing_.

“Tomorrow,” he whispered. “We are going to the midsummer festival on the third moon of Felix VI. Best ice cream in the thirty-second century. You’ll love it.”

“I will,” she promised.

 

-o-

 

_Oh! Before I go, there’s something else._

_Well._

_Well, it can wait actually. We’re running out of time, now, so remind me when this all over, yeah? We’ll have time, then._

_I’m sure of it, Rose._

**Author's Note:**

> say hello on [tumblr](http://marinxttes.tumblr.com)


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